As travel is slowly opening up Marriott Bonvoy is launching its rest of the summer and fall promotions. More than likely, we will probably see more people focusing on road trips, rather than long haul flights. So this promotion is a great way to rack up more bonus points. The details are as follows:
Bonus offer runs from August 13, 2020 to October 18, 2020
See also: COVID-19 Updates for our most up-to-date tracking.
Things have evolved quite a bit since March 2020 when the coronavirus lockdowns hit the travel industry. As time went on, airline and hotel program made adjustments to stay afloat. They also tried to make things more generous for customers, while trying to juggle their balance sheet.
Many people would argue that airlines would get government bailouts anyway, so all they really need to do is sit back and relax. Whether true or not, today’s post focuses on extensions given to member account balances. Several of those extensions have now expired, while some programs made some more permanent changes to their expiry policies.
With the economy slowly opening up through Canada and parts of the United States, Marriott Bonvoy is launching a 15% off gift card promotion. Effective today, July 20, 2020, until July 24, 2020, residents of Canada and the US only can purchase Marriott Bonvoy Gift Cards at a 15% discount with no expiry date.
Marriott Bonvoy is offering several initiatives to get its business going. If you are a fan of Marriott of have an upcoming stay with them, you may want to check out what additional options you have. Below are some exciting offers to watch for!
Off-Peak Rates
Marriott Bonvoy is offering a promotion for off-peak rates for bookings made before June 15, 2020 and June 30, 2020 for stays through July 31, 2020 at approximately 5,500 of their hotels. The idea is that during the stay period when the booking window is open, no hotel participating in Marriott Bonvoy will be priced at peak pricing.
Due to the current coronavirus pandemic, airline and hotel loyalty programs have paused/extended expiry policies to their miles and points. Today’s post is a current snapshot of the state of these programs.
Please note that we ongoingly update our COVID-19 updates page as well for most up-to-date information.
Keep in mind that we a frequently updated COVID-19 page.
With so much negativity surrounding the news, I would like to share some positive airline and hotel company YouTube videos. We posted a list a few weeks ago, so you can see the previous videos on that list. Today’s list are more recent videos since then.
Airlines and hotels have been putting together some positive videos together on YouTube, so I wanted to give them a shout out for putting these videos together. The videos range from: Thank you message Giving passengers assurance message (e.g. being…
IHG is the latest hotel chain to extend its elite statuses and expiry policy, which rounds out the majority of the major hotel chains. Note that we also have an ongoingly updated page found on our menu bar.
Below is a current recap of the elite status and points expiry extensions offer by some of the major hotel chains.
Best Western
I continued to closely follow hotels being put to use during the COVID-19 pandemic. There are many stories about hotels being “major victims” due to the pandemic. There are reports about the Canadian hotel industry laying off 80% (approximately 250,000 employees). The idea is that some of these jobs can be saved.
I do not believe that the government should be forcing a hotel to help out with the pandemic, but if they voluntarily do so, why not? My thought is that if a hotel is willing to re-purpose (make all necessary safety adjustments) its venue temporarily, the benefits are endless (including saving jobs, alleviating the hospitals, etc.).
This might be a weird topic for me to write about. But I am as huge fan of hotels in general, so I would like to see them stay afloat. So I have been following closely on stories about putting the hotels to use during the coronavirus lock-down.
I’ve already written two other posts about this topic: